SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This is a study of United States' policy towards South Africa between 1976 and 1986, the important period in the history of their relationship. It sets out to explain that there had never been a basic shift in successive U.S. policies towards the Republic. The driving force behind the Ford, Carter and Reagan doctrines towards Southern Africa, with focus on South Africa, had been to secure the U.S. national interests---economic and military/strategic. These policies, however, were based on belief of negotiated settlement to achieve majority rule in the region, and were critical of the apartheid system in South Africa. Throughout the period under discussion, South Africa has never remained important in U.S. policy planning, except the period of the mid 1980s, when it attracted the attention of high-level policy-makers, including the President and the Congress. It was during this time that the Republic appeared as a major political issue of U.S. domestic constituencies and on foreign policy agenda. It was partly because of the well publicized crisis in South Africa, and partly because of the Reagan administration's attitude towards the anti-apartheid groups. The combination of these factors had led the defeat of the Reagan administration's policy of constructive engagement and the implementation of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 in which Congress, under public pressure, deviced its policy towards South Africa.